Hospice Gardens

The Hospice gardens are maintained by gardening volunteers each week (contractors cut the grass). They also sell excess plants and cuttings to raise money for improvements and plant stock. Each quarter a team from a local company spend the day to do some of the heavier work such as mulching, garden furniture restoration or path cleaning. The charity also pays for the water features to be maintained.

 

The gardens provide peaceful surroundings during a time of great emotion and they are a source of great pleasure and calm to the patients and their visiting friends and families, and to the Day Care patients who can sit outside when the weather permits or be wheeled around.  The gardens surround the rear of the hospice, visible from the patients’ rooms; there are benches, tables and chairs so that those who are able to can sit outside and enjoy the fresh air. There are trees, shrubs and flowers in conventional and raised beds, water features, bird baths and feeding tables and wide accessible paths.  In the summer there are hanging baskets and pots of flowering plants positioned all around the main building.

It has become a tradition that the Day Care patients help with planting up the hanging baskets; each basket then gets a label indicating who has planted it, so the baskets have a therapeutic role.
This year we have included notices in several pots expressing gratitude to Purley on Thames Parish Council for sponsoring the plants and displays.

The Hospice gardens are maintained by gardening volunteers each week (contractors cut the grass). They also sell excess plants and cuttings to raise money for improvements and plant stock. Each quarter a team from a local company spend the day to do some of the heavier work such as mulching, garden furniture restoration or path cleaning. The charity also pays for the water features to be maintained.